Although Max Verstappen stole the headlines for winning the 2023 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, it was also the weekend Alex Albon out-qualified Williams team-mate Logan Sargeant yet again.
It meant the 27-year-old finished the F1 season as the only driver to have out-qualified their team-mate for every race in 2023.
Sargeant struggled in his rookie campaign with Albon always proving superior, but other driver pairings were much closer. So how did each driver compare to their team-mate in the 2023 F1 season?
Arguably one of the most one-sided pairings in 2023 was Red Bull, as Verstappen proved too much for Sergio Perez. The triple world champion clinched the title with six grands prix to spare and set many records in doing so.
One record was for the biggest points gap to second in the championship, with the margin bigger than the total points Perez amassed across 2023. While Verstappen was consistently claiming the race wins, Perez often struggled for a podium finish despite Red Bull’s superiority over the rest of the grid.
Perez did start the season pretty well though with two victories in the opening four races, as well as second in Bahrain. But from Miami onwards, Verstappen took it to another level leaving Perez to struggle and doubts to linger over his Red Bull future. The pressure is on the Mexican to improve significantly in 2024, which is the final year of his contract.
Lewis Hamilton bounced back from a disappointing 2022 where George Russell, in his first season at Mercedes, beat him in the standings and became the third team-mate of the seven-time world champion - after Jenson Button (2011) and Nico Rosberg (2016) - to do so.
But the roles reversed in 2023 and Russell said “this year the drivers’ championship has just been a complete disaster”. Hamilton, meanwhile, was one of F1’s best, being the highest-placed driver behind Red Bull’s pair in the standings with a pole position in Hungary his standout result.
Nevertheless, on the whole it has been a disappointing season for Mercedes who failed to claim a race victory for the first time since 2011. Much work is to be done if they are to improve on their second-place finish from 2023 and become world champions once again.
Crucial to that target is the drivers, who remain committed to the project having recently signed new contracts. Hamilton and Russell have a good relationship with much respect between the two, despite their collision in Qatar where the 38-year-old retired on lap one after turning in on his team-mate at the opening corner.
Source: Autosport